Busy, but still not very important.

Things will be a little quiet on the zine-ing and blogging front for a while, as I’ve decided to make the big move from Rockhampton radio newsreader to Melbourne tourism industry internet jockey. It’s all happened very quickly. So, instead of actually creating any new content, here’s a bunch of links to the best stuff I’ve found on the internet over the past few weeks.

Billy Corgan talks about being a bit more discerning regarding touring.

Touring is too weird now. We used to be able to string together a lot of dates just to hold the tour together between the major cities, and as the economy has gotten worse, it’s really wreaking havoc on those kind of plans. It’s difficult, I feel bad, of course every day on Twitter somebody writes, “Why don’t you come to our town?” And I feel really bad because I used to go to those places all the time, and I don’t know how to write somebody back and say, “I’d love to come but I don’t want to play in front of 473 people when I deserve to play in front of 4,000 people.” And the reason that I can’t play in front of 4,000 is that in your world, I don’t exist. Your local radio station won’t play me, and your local paper is gonna write about what a weirdo I am. And it’s hard because you don’t want to punish those 473 people, but It’s just the economics of it all. It’s a shame because the philosophy for the first 20 years of my musical life was, “If they want us to play, we’ll go there,” and generally the crowds were there to meet us. But that’s the way it goes.

Cat Marnell gets her shit together, kind of.

I love Cat Marnell’s writing, which is odd since I usually don’t give a shit about drugs or beauty advice. At any rate, it was the only thing that encouraged me to visit the otherwise terminally boring XOJane.com, as well as the terminally edgy (ugh) Vice.com. She’s one of very few people who can write about drugs and being on drugs without sounding like a Hunter S Thompson name-dropping wannabe. Her Vice column Amphetamine Logic was great, but she’s decided to get a little bit less messy as she approaches her 30th birthday. You can read about that here.